MAgic parts boxes

[Ribbonstone]

Ever wonder why many of  the old posters have a "magic parts box"?

Unless you are the repair/custom airgun bussiness, it's not becasue we're holy-prophets-of-future-mods.....it's becasue we are HOPEFULL it will come in useful eventually

Likely becasue we screwed up along the way and needed to salvage what we could, bought the wrong thing,  bought an assortment of things to find the one that did work, bought a "junker" that was past our ability to fix, bought a "spare" to fix an old rifle with no parts supply, or found out (late) we couldn't get it to do what we set out to do.

Yep...guilty of all of those....did serve to teach me somthing...also resulted in a lot of parts laying around.

Unless you WANT a big box full of "should have been" parts,try to calm down and be logical FIRST (which always works out better than autopsy).

1. Research. Know the rifle at hand well, inside and out....know what other's have done....know how to get it a part and back together.  All airguns are a system,understand what each part actually does in the system.

2. Ask what you aren't sure of....pretty much the most useful reason for these forums. Do have your BS detector turned to "hi".

3.Given a choice that results in the same outcome...work on the cheap/easier to replace part rather than the expensive /hard to replace part.

4. DOUBLE think anything non-reversible that you think needs doing.

5. Goal: Have a clear goal. Open ended goals (like "all I can got" of something) never have a clear end....a race without a  finish line.  Even with an "all I can get" goal, better to think of it in stages, each stage a seperate goal.

6. Safety first.  Consider strength/integrety of the changes.  No one gets hurt by being safety minded,the opposit is not true. TAke it as a bad sign if folks study your rifle...then move one or two benchs away at the range.

7.  Ability. Do you have the tooling and ability to do the work,make any parts needed, and accurately judge the results. Embarrasing to find you need a "double ended reverse threaded metric widget" but don't have any way of making one.

8. Plan.  Take your time,think it though a few times,get the parts/tools you need ready and working.

9. Document. We all screw up now and again.   99.5% of us have phones that take pictures. Take pictures along the way.  Pretty good way to avoid that "left over" part on the bench.

10.Test/evaluate carefully....got back to #1 if you want to change things.

THINGS TO AVOID:

Familiarity...we think we know,start out on a project,find out we didn't know.

Goal fixation. Really...if you wanted 30 foot pounds,but got 29.2...is it really worth it to go back in again? 

No rush job turns out to be as nice as it could have been.  If you gotta get it done in one sitting,might want to rethink doing it at all.

Know junk when you see it. Past a certain point,starting with a new part beats the *(&^ out of trying to fix a screwed up one.  Learn...but toss, don't save,the screwed up one.

[nervoustrigger]

A whole bunch of wisdom there.

Wisdom I would not have fully appreciated a few years ago, but can now by having learned it the hard way.

[FuzzyGrub]

Hey, I resemble that post!      

[Ribbonstone]

Thinking about it digging throught the junk boxes,looking for a tall, all steel, screw mounted, hooded front sight.

Thinking,"How the xxxx did I end up with all this xxxx?"

Did find the sight I was thinking of....whoopie...one part of a way-past screw up lives another day.


There has got to be a airgunners version  of "hoarding..burried alive".

[FuzzyGrub]

There has got to be a airgunners version  of "hoarding..burried alive".

I think you could do a full season just on GTA members.   

[Rabbit\Squirrel Killer]

I have quite a few parts that I have bought when I have seen them at good prices and new parts just in-case I need them. That is because I am always looking to buy "broken" airguns when the price is right, if I have the part that I bought cheaply it makes that broken one more attractive to me. I don't buy parts guns (everything I buy deserves fixing) I have become pickier over time and only have a couple that I haven't fixed yet. Last year one day I put together 5 airguns from my parts box without needing to buy any additional parts.